If You Build It

This innovative collection features 35 simple, inexpensive projects that you can make from salvaged and upcycled materials -- cardboard, metal, plastic, and wood. The projects include tables, shelving units, chairs, lamps, and more, in a variety of styles. Many are stackable and easily portable, most can be made in a weekend, and all include instructions for disassembly and disposal when you’re ready to repurpose the materials. If you’d rather make than buy, these low-budget, high-style designs are just what you’re looking for.

Master herbalist Amy Jirsa offers recipes and ideas for exploring and embracing the distinctive qualities of 12 powerful healing herbs -- chamomile, rose, dandelion, holy basil, nettle, calendula, lavender, turmeric, echinacea, elder, cinnamon, and ginger. Jirsa shows you how to get to know each one just as an herbalist does -- by immersing yourself in every aspect of the herb and naturally coming to understand its innate properties. Through delicious teas and foods, luxurious salves, skin and hair care treatments, complementary yoga poses, meditations, and more, you’ll deepen your appreciation of these herbs and learn how best to use them for radiant health and wellness.

Carpenter Spike Carlsen, his wife, and their recently blended family of five kids set out to build a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior. Part building guide and part memoir, Cabin Lessons tells the funny, wry, and heartwarming story of their eventful journey -- from buying land on an eroding cliff to (finally) enjoying the hideaway of their dreams. Learning as they go, and learning about themselves and each other along the way, they find in the end that they’ve built a strong family as well as a sturdy cabin.

Small steps can create big changes in your community’s food quality and food security, helping to get more healthy food to more people and support a better food system. Ali Berlow shows you dozens of things that anyone can do, from creating a neighborhood kitchen for preserving fresh food to mapping farmland, connecting food pantries with food producers, starting a school garden, and organizing a community composting initiative. Every action you take can help keep farmers on the land and family farms intact, keep money in the local economy, reduce the carbon footprint associated with food transportation, and preserve local landscapes. If you’ve had enough of E. coli scares, disappearing farmland, pesticide problems, and hunger in your community, this inspiring book will show you exactly how one person really can make a difference.

The intimate lives of familiar birds as never before seen! Spectacular, stunning, and beautiful close-up photography documents the family lives of more than 50 birds, from the first song of the courting male to the first flight of the fledglings. You'll find images of the male and female, nest construction, the eggs, the parents on the nest, nestlings, feeding time, fledglings taking their first leap, and more. The featured birds include songbirds, urban birds such as raptors and pigeons, water birds, and owls, and all of them are common to North America.

Creamy Clam Chowder. Portuguese Caldo Verde Chowder. Northwest Salmon Chowder with Leeks and Peas. Double Corn Summer Chowder. Brooke Dojny offers 57 recipes for chowders of all kinds -- some made with seafood, some with meat, and some with just veggies -- plus side dishes, salads, and desserts. Whether you’re looking for a hearty meal on a cozy winter evening or a fresh gumbo perfect for a summer lunch, you’ll turn to this delicious collection again and again!